ST. GEORGE, UTAH
They call this area Utah's Dixie, and for more reasons than the fact that it is as far south as you can get in the Beehive State before crossing over into Arizona.
It was 150 years ago this year in October that 309 families established St. George and environs, sent by Brigham Young to establish the Church's Cotton Mission. With the outbreak of the Civil War that year, the commodity had suddenly become scarce — in Utah as in the rest of the country — and President Young saw it as a necessary element to the self-sufficiency of the "State of Deseret." In fact, many of the settlers hailed from the South and thus possessed the necessary skills to grow the crop.
The Cotton Mission had a brief duration, partly because the end of the war made cotton plentiful again. But by then, the community was there to stay. Struggling to scrape an existence from the red-rock country through a variety of agricultural ventures — including a short-lived endeavor to produce silk — the residents survived and eventually flourished.
In 1911, precisely a century ago, Dixie Academy was established. Like other Church-founded academies in the Utah territory, it eventually became a public institution and today is operated by the state of Utah as Dixie State College.
Meanwhile, the area has established its niche as a tourist destination and a retirement mecca. You see, like its namesake in the southern United States, Utah's Dixie is sunny and warm.
The climate combined with the sesquicentennial observance were motive enough for the Mormon History Association to hold its annual conference in St. George this year. The three-day event drew more than 700 professional and amateur historians and history enthusiasts from disparate locales, the second-largest turnout in the organization's history. (The largest was in Salt Lake City in 2007; Utah locations typically draw more attendees.)
Established in 1965 by Church historian Leonard J. Arrington, the association is an eclectic group. Most are LDS, it may be safely assumed, but many are not. For example, this year's president (each term lasts a year) was William P. MacKinnon, a Presbyterian and former General Motors executive whose fascination with the Mormon past extends back to 1958 when he was a history major at Yale University and did a paper on the Utah War, establishing his expertise on that subject. The president-elect for next year is Richard L. Jensen, a research historian with the Church History Department.
Attendees at the conference chose from about 115 presentations on a variety of subjects on Mormon history. Several of them focused on the history of the Church in St. George and southern Utah, in keeping with the theme "From Cotton to Cosmopolitan: Local, National and Global Transformations in Mormon History."
Optional tours before and after the conference covered Las Vegas and the Mormon Corridor, Southern Utah and Northern Arizona and the famed Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition.
Closer to town, some conference attendees took in a "St. George LIVE" tour put on by the city with the help of local volunteer re-enactors in the personae of Jacob Hamblin at the original adobe house in the courtyard; apostle Orson Pratt at the Pioneer Opera house displaying the odometer he designed for counting the miles on the Mormon trek west from Nauvoo; apostle Erastus Snow at the St. George Tabarnacle; Judge John Menzies Mcfarlane presiding at the Old Courthouse in a case of the theft of precious irrigation water.
Brigham Young was on the tour, greeting visitors to his winter home, a fixture in downtown St. George. President Young purchased an existing structure in 1871 and built a two-story front section before moving into the home two years later. It became a de facto Church headquarters during the time he was in St. George.
Visitors to the Brigham Young home can see displayed pictures of St. George's name sake, apostle George A. Smith. Though he did not participate in the town's settlement, he selected many of the pioneers who did. Local histories recount that he was sometimes called "the potato saint" because he urged the eating of potato peelings as a cure for scurvy. Missionaries at the Brigham Young winter home are apt to tell visitors of the name given to Elder Smith by Paiute Indians, roughly translated to "man that comes apart," because he would amaze them by removing his wig, glasses and false teeth in their presence.
St. George is, of course, a temple city, and though it was not on any conference tour, some conference attendees took time on Sunday to visit the grounds of St. George's most famous edifice. Dedicated in 1877, it pre-dated the Salt Lake Temple and enabled Brigham Young to re-establish temple ordinances in the Utah Territory, having been taught them in Nauvoo, Ill., by the Prophet Joseph Smith.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEnJ%2BuqpOdu6bD0meaqKVfZ31yfY5vZm1nYmh%2Fc4KWcW9oraSWtbR5w6Kvop1dnsBuv8itnGaen6d6orrNrpilZZ2kv667zWafoqukpL%2B6ecCsqqibmZbBqrvNZpqoppaav6a6wp4%3D